Ludwig's Odyssey: Alsace-Lorraine

A quick stopover across the border and into Luxembourg to fill up with Diesel (it’s less than £1 a litre here), and we were off towards Metz.

We stopped over at a proper campsite in a very lovely setting around a lake for the night, some 25 mins outside of Metz, and in the morning made our way over to visit the city.

Metz was very quiet, not really on the tourist trail, although it should be as it has some nice sights—including the usual cathedral, and the interesting Pompidou Art Centre—however the main plaza, full with restaurants, was very busy at lunch time.
Being in the Lorraine region of France, of course we had to have a slice of Quiche, Wendy’s favourite.

A few hours nicely spent walking around the city, we bought some supplies and then headed off for one hour in the easterly direction of Strasbourg. We found another excellent spot in the woods by a fishing lake (Etang de Gondrexange)—halfway between Metz and Strasbourg—to camp for the night.
We liked it so much, we decided to spend another day here, relaxing in the glorious sunshine—not a cloud in the sky—drinking the beers that a German guy offered to us the night before for charging up his mobile phone, (he’d been fishing and camping out here for a night or two, his phone was flat and his charger was broken, so he was very happy to get some juice again).

We moved on the next day, albeit not very far to another quiet spot to relax in the sun, up in the mountains near Grendelbruch, well it was peaceful for a while.
We were parked near the Stade (Football pitch), and lots of people parked up to watch the local side, they were gone quickly enough though so the night was quiet.

After a couple of days of not doing much, we decided to be tourists again and headed off towards the Route des Vins. Starting off at Obernai, we made our way down towards the Haut Koeningsbourg Castle, stopping off at various places along the way, some of the most beautiful towns and villages in France, full of wooden fronted buildings, typical of the region.
The castle was a real surprise. It had been a ruin since the mid 1600s until Kaiser Wilhelm II decided to restore it to its former glory in the early 1900s—no doubt to stamp his authority in the region once again (Alsace-Lorraine was seeded to Germany in 1871).
They really did a fantastic job, it’s a great castle to visit, unlike the previous castle we visited in Germany (Eltz) this one we could walk around at our leisure, which we much prefer so we had plenty of time to take it all in and take far too many photos.

After a stopover at a proper campsite, the next day, we continued down the Route des Vins and visited three more of the most beautiful villages in France, Ribeauville, Riquewir & Eguisheim. All very pretty and picture perfect medieval villages with lots of timber fronted houses. These places are very tourist friendly and must be busy most of the time but they were even more so as it was a national holiday (8 Mai—VE day).
We then headed off towards the Rhine to wild camp by the river for the night, stopping off at a Maginot Line memorial in Marckolsheim on the way.

We’ll head back into Germany soon, the question is do we go to Strasbourg first…

Camping Near Metz